


Similiarities and Differences (In the end it's all the same)

by nightofdean



Series: A War Story (Non Redacted Version) [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Afghanistan, Blood, Bucky mention, Gore, War, World War II, explicit violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-09 01:05:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1963161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightofdean/pseuds/nightofdean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Obviously there are differences,” he said, “chief among them the absence of the draft. But there are enough similarities. These are wars in which there are no uniforms, no front, no rear. Who’s the enemy? What do you shoot back at? Whom do you trust? At the bottom, all wars are the same because they involve death and maiming and wounding, and grieving mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.”</i> - Tim O’Brien on Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When Steve Rogers crashed into the ice the world was still at war. Seventy years later Steve Rogers returns to the world to find it still in battle, a new battle. Yet for all of it’s differences Steve can’t help but count the similarities.

Steve doesn’t share when he sits in at Sam’s counseling sessions. Steve doesn’t speak only listening and he realizes this new war is no different than the one before it.

The soldiers describe not their losses but their hardest decisions, the blinding panic amidst enemy crossfire when it’s shoot or die. When a small afghani child stands in a too big cloak, tear streaked, her mother screams held back by a stern faced father (be strong for now, for them, his expression screams). All the signs scream _bomb bombbombbomb_ , they scramble, take cover, no time, can’t disarm.

The death, senseless maiming, and rampant grief, is so familiar to Steve that he sees, hears, and smells in clear vivid detail the stench of death.

It was a smell he would never forget. Poland was blitzkrieged many of it’s villages completely unprotected, the Commandos passed through each town as respectfully as possible.

There were so many bodies, twisted, and mangled by shrapnel and debris. Intermittently a howl or scream would erupt from the distance, cursing God perhaps, damning the Germans. The Commandos marched on, there was nothing to be done in the town. The howls and screams continued, as the soldiers passed each new body, pale limbs twisted grotesquely beneath demolished stone debris.

Nothing was said that day. They entered and exited seven villages that day.

Steve blinked the meeting over almost all of the veterans exited. Sam stood to Steve’s right, looking contemplatively into the paper cup of coffee he held. Steve gave him a moment, Sam was usually quiet after counseling sessions.

Sam took a sip of his coffee, tipped his head to the side and sighed wryly. “After all this time I’m beginning to think I got off easy.”

Steve fumbled knowing this was wrong. No one got off easy in war, yes, the soldiers who had just left got the raw end of the deal but Sam had still returned home missing a part of himself. It may not be visible, like a arm, or leg, but Sam’s loss was no less important or valuable than any other loss, and should be recognized. Steve knew that, he’d lost his heart seventy years ago.

Soldiers didn’t always come home with scars on their flesh. Sometimes more often than not they returned with abrasions to their soul, pieces of themselves missing.

In the end all wars were the same, the damage was the same. No one survived war.

  



	2. Change a lot Change a little

He doesn't make the connection until later, at least a month, when he does its frightening, intense. This new – for him – realization is frightening – no, it’s disturbing. What he sees is a new terrifying type of war fare. He scolds himself, not being able to predict this outcome, this…inevitability. It was always his Achilles heel, naivety.

_How do we know who the enemy is?_

Sam asked a simple question, who is friend who is foe. In war, in at least Steve’s war there were uniforms, distinct lines between friend and foe, good and evil. Black and white. This war was being fought in shadow, beneath the metaphorical cloak, within the ‘safe’ structures of home. Friend was now enemy, uniforms obsolete.

Sam knew this, seen this. The men who fought against the soldiers in Afghanistan have no dress blues, brass to shine, cuffs to tuck in, or chain of command to follow, the did as men did and defended what they believed to be right. They fought, everyone fought, at will, or against it.

Sometimes screaming, shaking, and attached to IED’s begging the American bomb tech to release them.

Sometimes, it was kill or be killed and bare boned women and children carried weaponry much too heavy for themselves. And suddenly the gun is aimed for the soldier and there is no time for guessing games, kill or be killed.

Steve tells Sam the simple answer.

_If their shooting at you they’re the enemy._

Steve knows that this must’ve been modus operandi that ran through Sam’s mind – like a broken record – because it’s what went through his during war. He knows this is all Sam must know, taking blind shots at civilians – _no they had guns, they were going to kill you, stop beating yourself up_.

Steve can’t help but notice this will be all he knows from now on.

Rushing the frontlines and squaring off with German soldiers, uniforms distinct from their Russian neighbor’s. Italian uniforms recognizable from that of their French prisoners. He had each nation’s uniform memorized, cautious and wary.

He had even updated himself on each nation’s current uniform changes. The knowledge now obsolete.

Wars’ were now fought with intelligence and computer surveillance. They were fought with knowledge, politics, and deadly assassins.

Men like him – Steve Rogers – were obsolete.

He was in world, of shadow, and he was the biggest target. All of his flanks exposed.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is so much about Steve just adjusting. Being thrown from one war filled time to another. Then being thrust into a battle after being thawed. After thinking about it I'm surprised that Steve didn't tell them to just fuck off. But we all know Steve and his righteous, just a kid from Brooklyn heart.


End file.
